Hilarious, thrilling and visually stunning, Thor: Ragnarok is a contender for best Marvel movie yet. Director Taika Waititi brings his laid-back New Zealand style of comedy to the Marvel universe, giving a pleasantly light touch to the action-packed proceedings. Ragnarok often feels more like a cosmic episode of Flight of the Conchords than a superhero film. The stakes are high but there's very little real drama. You might be expecting a dramatic Shakespearian showdown between Thor and his trickster brother Loki, who has taken over the throne of Asgard. The film throws that drama away quickly, to keep Loki by Thor's side as they take on a greater threat.
That's Hela, goddess of death, played by Cate Blanchett (and curiously sexier than ever at age 48). Blanchett makes a great serious villain, while Jeff Goldblum is funny as the Grandmaster, who forces his captives to battle to the death for the amusement of a coliseum audience. He's decadent and probably a bit kinky, and having fun playing Jeff Goldblum.
The Grandmaster's fighting champion is Mark Ruffalo's The Incredible Hulk, who suddenly has a lot to say for himself. So does Bruce Banner, who is amusingly anxious, lost and confused about what's been going on these past two years - closer to a Curb Your Enthusiasm character than an Avenger. This isn't the Planet Hulk movie you might have been waiting for. Banner is a supporting player, and it's very much Thor's film. The light comedic tone looks good on Thor and any dramatic character revelations are part of his story.
Thor and Loki have a casual brotherly rapport here. Loki isn't the villain he was in The Avengers. The Thor series has gotten a lot of mileage out of the respect and rivalry the brothers have for one another, even as Loki can never stay on the side of good for long. If not for the inevitable moments of betrayal, Tom Hiddleston could be playing a hero here. There's no point where he gets really nasty. That's a big missed opportunity but it suits the film's casual tone, and the fact that Loki isn't the villain here. He's defanged, and we see the team of heroic brothers that they could have been if Loki had less ambition and more self control.
Marvel movies have often been known for weak villains, but Cate Blanchett's Hela is a dominating, powerful threat, so much so that the film holds her back a bit so that the fight can still be winnable.
Thor builds a hero team he calls "The Revengers." That includes Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, whose character also has a New Zealand edge somehow. Taika Waititi himself voices Korg, a comic relief character who is about as New Zealandy as you can get.
Tessa Thompson is very likeable and has good chemistry with Hemsworth and even Ruffalo. She also has a fully fleshed out character arc, even though she doesn't have a lot to do.
Similarly, Karl Urban plays Skurge, getting lots of laughs early on before spending most of the film as the villain's sidekick.
Anthony Hopkins turns up as Odin, playing his part in Thor's hero's journey. Idris Elba gets a true hero's welcome as Heimdall, and it's nice that the film recognizes the importance of a supporting hero. Especially since otherwise the Thor series has lost a lot of its supporting cast. Hogun, Volstagg and Fandral are barely in the film, and Sif is missing - probably for the best, all things considered. The Asgardian heroes were a welcome presence in the other films and are missed here.
Frigga died in the last film, and Darcy and Erik aren't here either. Jane Foster is absent, and very unlikely to return. You have to wonder what went on here that Natalie Portman couldn't be coaxed back to be part of the biggest franchise in the world.
The first Thor film mostly took itself very seriously and it's interesting to see the series change gears here into a full-on comedy adventure. Chris Hemsworth is all charm as Thor and this installment really knows how to use him effectively. He's having fun and so are we. Early on (and again later) we get an action scene set to Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, which seems like too obvious a music choice, but the action is good enough that it owns the choice and gets you in the right mood.
The film also makes good comedic use of another Marvel hero who I'd previously found underwhelming. And it's nice to see a film built around Avengers whose absence in other films wasn't even noticed.
There are a few good cameo appearances that I won't spoil.
While humor has always been a part of Marvel's film output, comedy casually dominates the proceedings here. The Captain America films were built around big dramatic beats and emotional moments, and we get less of that in this lighter entry, although Thor himself goes through a journey that changes him.
The Thor: Ragnarok logo leaps off the screen, drawn in full Jack Kirby style. More than any previous Marvel film this feels visually like a tribute to Jack Kirby. The Grandmaster's planet in particular is intensely colorful and its set designs are clearly a pop-art take on how Jack Kirby drew machinery. Visually the film just screams "fun," and everything else about it follows suit, from the comedy to the action to the effects, and the chemistry and charisma of the cast. Flashback sequences to an army of Valkyries taking on Hela are stunning, although I found the white Valkyrie costume to be a weak point in an otherwise well designed film.
Marvel has put out a ton of great superhero films at this point, and there is a real danger that they might all start to feel the same, or play things straight. Marvel lost Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Patty Jenkins from Thor: The Dark World, and it's easy to wonder whether such strong directorial voices might be lost and made more boring and "samey" when absorbed into Marvel's "house style."
Thor: Ragnarok is nothing like that. It's funny, colorful and weird, and delivers superhero-sized action and thrills while losing none of the awkwardness of Taika Waititi's particular brand of comedy. It has a definite New Zealand flavor - Heimdall's storyline looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, and the messy world of the Grandmaster is a Kiwi fever dream. Much like how Guardians of the Galaxy retained James Gunn's dark, gory, collegiate sense of humor, Thor: Ragnarok is a quirky addition to the Marvel canon that shows that a director's voice can still come through in an Avengers film. Its light tone comes with a casual ease which never feels forced or clunky.
The film doesn't linger on serious or dramatic moments, but it takes Hela seriously as a villain and moves forward Thor's story in a cataclysmic way, tearing apart his entire world as if they don't expect to ever make another Thor film. We'll see about that.
Either way, Thor: Ragnarok is the most fun you'll have at the movies until the next Avengers film.
SPOILERS:
In how it treats Valkyrie, Hela and Odin, the film also hints at a deeper morality and meaning. And the specific way it's handled seems to come from director Taika Waititi's own heritage, his father being indigenous New Zealand Maori. Tessa Thompson's character is a Valkyrie, a line of great Asgardian warriors. When most of that line was wiped out, and she's forced from her homeland, she is introduced as a scavenger and a drunk. This is the "Once Were Warriors" subtext about native and indigenous people in any country. The former Valkyrie does what she has to, to survive, and it's only Thor that recognizes the great culture she came from originally. We also learn that Odin, Thor's father, was not the peaceful, benevolent ruler he portrayed himself as. With Hela, Goddess of Death by his side, he conquered civilizations, conquered worlds, and killed countless people. He was a colonial conqueror killing natives. By the end of the film, after Hela has killed Asgardians en masse, decimating the population, the surviving population of Asgard is on a ship, and they've all become native refugees looking for a new home. So the subtext for the film is a brief history of the horrors of colonialism, of our own history all across the world. I believe that backstory would still have largely been present if any other director had handled this material, but that it wouldn't have had the same feeling, and the same little touches of New Zealand native culture which make it feel genuine. And that really is interesting.